Big Dummy's Guide To The Internet - Electronic Frontier Foundation (reading rainbow books .txt) 📗

when you type that, telnet to

consultant.micro.umn.edu

At the log-in prompt, type

gopher

and hit enter. You’ll be asked what type of terminal emulation you’re

using, after which you’ll see something like this:

Internet Gopher Information Client v1.03

Root gopher server: gopher.micro.umn.edu

—> 1. Information About Gopher/

2. Computer Information/

3. Discussion Groups/

4. Fun & Games/

5. Internet file server (ftp) sites/

6. Libraries/

7. News/

8. Other Gopher and Information Servers/

9. Phone Books/

10. Search lots of places at the U of M

11. University of Minnesota Campus Information/

Press ? for Help, q to Quit, u to go up a menu Page: 1/1

Assuming you’re using VT100 or some other VT emulation, you’ll be

able to move among the choices with your up and down arrow keys. When

you have your cursor on an entry that looks interesting, just hit enter,

and you’ll either get a new menu of choices, a database entry form, or a

text file, depending on what the menu entry is linked to (more on how to

tell which you’ll get in a moment).

Gophers are great for exploring the resources of the Net. Just keep

making choices to see what pops up. Play with it; see where it takes

you. Some choices will be documents. When you read one of these and

either come to the end or hit a lower-case q to quit reading it, you’ll

be given the choice of saving a copy to your home directory or e-mailing

it to yourself. Other choices are simple databases that let you enter a

word to look for in a particular database. To get back to where you

started on a gopher, hit your u key at a menu prompt, which will move you

back “up” through the gopher menu structure (much like “cd ..” in ftp).

Notice that one of your choices above is “Internet file server (ftp)

sites.” Choose this, and you’ll be connected to a modified archie

program — an archie with a difference. When you search for a file

through a gopher archie, you’ll get a menu of sites that have the file

you’re looking for, just as with the old archie. Only now, instead of

having to write down or remember an ftp address and directory, all you

have to do is position the cursor next to one of the numbers in the menu

and hit enter. You’ll be connected to the ftp site, from which you can

then choose the file you want. This time, move the cursor to the file

you want and hit a lower-case s. You’ll be asked for a name in your home

directory to use for the file, after which the file will be copied to

your home system. Unfortunately, this file-transfer process does not yet

work with all public-access sites for computer programs and compressed

files. If it doesn’t work with yours, you’ll have to get the file the

old-fashioned way, via anonymous ftp.

In addition to ftp sites, there are hundreds of databases and

libraries around the world accessible through gophers. There is not yet

a common gopher interface for library catalogs, so be prepared to follow

the online directions more closely when you use gopher to connect to

one.

Gopher menu entries that end in a / are gateways to another menu of

options. Entries that end in a period are text, graphics or program

files, which you can retrieve to your home directory (or e-mail to

yourself or to somebody else). A line that ends in or

represents a request you can make to a database for information. The

difference is that entries call up one-line interfaces in which you

can search for a keyword or words, while brings up an electronic

form with several fields for you to fill out (you might see this in

online “White Pages” directories at colleges).

Gophers actually let you perform some relatively sophisticated

Boolean searches. For example, if you want to search only for files that

contain the words “MS-DOS” and “Macintosh,” you’d type

ms-dos and macintosh

(gophers are not case-sensitive) in the keyword field. Alternately, if

you want to get a list of files that mention either “MS-DOS” or

“Macintosh,” you’d type

ms-dos or macintosh

8.2 BURROWING DEEPER

As fascinating as it can be to explore “gopherspace,” you might one

day want to quickly retrieve some information or a file. Or you might

grow tired of calling up endless menus to get to the one you want.

Fortunately, there are ways to make even gophers easier to use.

One is with archie’s friend, veronica (it allegedly is an acronym,

but don’t believe that for a second), who does for gopherspace what

archie does for ftp sites.

In most gophers, you’ll find veronica by selecting “Other gopher and

information services” at the main menu and then “Searching through

gopherspace using veronica.” Select this and you’ll get something like

this:

Internet Gopher Information Client v1.1

Search titles in Gopherspace using veronica

—> 1. .

2. FAQ: Frequently-Asked Questions about veronica (1993/08/23).

3. How to compose veronica queries (NEW June 24) READ ME!!.

4. Search Gopher Directory Titles at PSINet

5. Search Gopher Directory Titles at SUNET

6. Search Gopher Directory Titles at U. of Manitoba

7. Search Gopher Directory Titles at University of Cologne

8. Search gopherspace at PSINet

9. Search gopherspace at SUNET

10. Search gopherspace at U. of Manitoba

11. Search gopherspace at University of Cologne

Press ? for Help, q to Quit, u to go up a menu Page: 1/1

A few choices there! First, the difference between searching

directory titles and just plain ol’ gopherspace. If you already know the

sort of directory you’re looking for (say a directory containing MS-DOS

programs), do a directory-title search. But if you’re not sure what kind

of directory your information might be in, then do a general

gopherspace search. In general, it doesn’t matter which of the particular

veronicas you use — they should all be able to produce the same results.

The reason there is more than one is because the Internet has become so

popular that only one veronica (or one gopher or one of almost anything)

would quickly be overwhelmed by all the information requests from around

the world.

You can use veronica to search for almost anything. Want to find

museums that might have online displays from their exhibits? Try

searching for “museum.” Looking for a copy of the Declaration of

Independence? Try “declaration.”

In many cases, your search will bring up a new gopher menu of

choices to try.

Say you want to impress those guests coming over for dinner on

Friday by cooking cherries flambe. If you were to call up veronica and

type in “flambe” after calling up veronica, you would soon get a menu

listing several flambe recipes, including one called “dessert flambe.”

Put your cursor on that line of the menu and hit enter, and you’ll find

it’s a menu for cherries flambe. Then hit your q key to quit, and gopher

will ask you if you want to save the file in your home directory on your

public-access site or whether you want to e-mail it somewhere.

As you can see, you can use veronica as an alternative to archie,

which, because of the Internet’s growing popularity, seems to take longer

and longer to work.

In addition to archie and veronica, we now also have jugheads (no

bettys yet, though). These work the same as veronicas, but their

searches are limited to the specific gopher systems on which they reside.

If there are particular gopher resources you use frequently, there

are a couple of ways to get to them even more directly.

One is to use gopher in a manner similar to the way you can use

telnet. If you know a particular gopher’s Internet address (often the

same as its telnet or ftp address), you can connect to it directly,

rather than going through menus. For example, say you want to use the

gopher at info.umd.edu. If your public-access site has a gopher system

installed, type this

gopher info.umd.edu

at your command prompt and you’ll be connected.

But even that can get tedious if there are several gophers you use

frequently. That’s where bookmarks come in. Gophers let you create a

list of your favorite gopher sites and even database queries. Then,

instead of digging ever deeper into the gopher directory structure, you

just call up your bookmark list and select the service you want.

To create a bookmark for a particular gopher site, first call up

gopher. Then go through all the gopher menus until you get to the menu

you want. Type a capital A. You’ll be given a suggested name for the

bookmark enty, which you can change if you want by backspacing over the

suggestion and typing in your own. When done, hit enter. Now, whenever

you’re in gopherspace and want to zip back to that particular gopher

service, just hit your V key (upper- or lower-case; in this instance,

gopher doesn’t care) anywhere within gopher. This will bring up a list

of your bookmarks. Move to the one you want and hit enter, and you’ll be

connected.

Using a capital A is also good for saving particular database or

veronica queries that you use frequently (for example, searching for

news stories on a particular topic if your public-access site maintains

an indexed archive of wire-service news).

Instead of a capital A, you can also hit a lower-case a. This will